View Full Version : Is there any mail notification utility for Mac ?
QuorthonRhar
November 24th, 2007, 08:57 AM
Hello you wonderful forum people !
I have another little question... I used to use POP Peeper, great little utility that basically sits in your system tray and constantly checking incoming emails to limitless number or account. It supports Gmail, Hotmail, any POP3 account... Since I use more than just one email account (gmail, hotmail and few pop3 accounts) this utility was unbelievable useful to me. Application has no effect on system resources because it is unbelievable light, you don't even know it exists. You can set its times so for example, it can check for new emails every X minutes. There are nice notifications, and audio notifications by your choice. You can set a different sound for each account, so when you are watching your TV or something, when you hear that sound in the background, you know which account you just got email into. OK, I don't need all these bells and whistles, but I do need something that would sit in my taskbar and check emails for me. Some will think why is this needed when you can have your Apple Mail open all the time and let it check emails for you... well, because... Apple Mail will automatically download all emails, SPAM or not SPAM, and we don't want that, especially if we get a lot of junk emails to some account. POP Peeper has a wonderful feature and that's when it shows you what emails just arrived to your inbox, you could simply mark them and "tell" it to erase them while they're still on the server... they don't even rich your mailbox on your local computer, avoiding flooding your mailbox.
Is there anything similar for Mac ? I know about Gmail notifier, but that one will check Gmail account only.
Thanks in advance and have a wonderful day everybody !
zo219
November 25th, 2007, 04:05 AM
There are any number of mail checkers for Mail, depending on what functions you want. Growl has Mail notifications... try searching http://www.macupdate.com ... But it also sounds as though you want IMAP mail instead of POP....
QuorthonRhar
November 25th, 2007, 08:50 AM
Thank you for your respond!
I am not sure how IMAP works, but all I know is that POP Peeper on Windows, you just have to set up your POP3 accounts exactly the same way you usually set them inside your Mail client (Outlook Express or Thunderbird) and POP Peeper does everything for you... sorry for my ignorance when it comes to this part.
But other than that, yes... I need something that would just give me some kind of notification when an email hits my inbox. I don't want to download it, just to be able to see when something came in, so I can open my Apple Mail and check newly arrived emails.
Another question... since I am newly Mac convert from PC Windows machine, in your opinion, which one is better... Apple Mail (Leopard) or Mozilla Thunderbird ? I used to use TB in Windows, but I do like some features Apple Mail offers... however, I've noticed when you have to create a new mail, TB offers a lot more text editing options. Just curious what Mac users think about this one...
Thanks again I really appreciate you took some time to answer my questions. Thanks!
charlich
November 25th, 2007, 06:28 PM
Currently there is Growl and Mail.application. Neither which have worked for me with Leopard. Tried work arounds and no luck. Seems weird that such an everyday app seems so hard to come by.....
ElDiabloConCaca
November 26th, 2007, 01:11 PM
Growl with the GrowlMail plug-in work great in notifying me of new messages for any of my accounts (various POP. IMAP and .Mac) in Mail.app.
Growl doesn't support Mail.app "out-of-the-box" (er, vice-versa -- Mail.app doesn't support Growl natively), so you need to grab the GrowlMail plug-in to use with Growl from here:
http://growl.info/applications.php
Of course, the mail has already arrived and has been downloaded when you get the Growl notification -- which doesn't exactly meet your specific needs, but is the best I can come up with at the moment.
QuorthonRhar
November 26th, 2007, 07:11 PM
Growl with the GrowlMail plug-in work great in notifying me of new messages for any of my accounts (various POP. IMAP and .Mac) in Mail.app.
Growl doesn't support Mail.app "out-of-the-box" (er, vice-versa -- Mail.app doesn't support Growl natively), so you need to grab the GrowlMail plug-in to use with Growl from here:
http://growl.info/applications.php
Of course, the mail has already arrived and has been downloaded when you get the Growl notification -- which doesn't exactly meet your specific needs, but is the best I can come up with at the moment.
Thank you so much for this advice ! Yes, I'll keep this in mind and if I don't find anything similar to POP Peeper (or Mail Washer for that matter), I'll use this... at least it will give me some nice notifications when mail has arrived.
Thank you again for taking some time to answer my question and explain this in details, I really appreciate it.
Cheers!
charlich
November 26th, 2007, 09:00 PM
Where do I get the plugin for Growl. I went to the link you provided but don't know where to go from there....Please explain. Thanks.
Satcomer
November 26th, 2007, 11:41 PM
Click on the fancy Growl word (on the lined page) in the top left hand corner. It will take you to the splash page that has a download link on it.
zo219
November 27th, 2007, 12:59 AM
My answer was incomplete. In Mail, under Accounts, Advanced, you have a setting to permanently download mail from server or not. Though of course Gmail archives everything, if you set it to.
"Mail Unread Menu" is working fine for me in Leopard, on Intel.
charlich
November 27th, 2007, 09:16 AM
"Click on the fancy Growl word (on the lined page) in the top left hand corner. It will take you to the splash page that has a download link on it."
I still don't see the plugin. Only the link to download the program itself. (Which I have downloaded too many time to count without success). I wish this process was more streamlined. Thanks.
charlich
November 27th, 2007, 08:46 PM
I downloaded again and am receiving some system notifications. But there is no Growl icon showing up in the Mail preference page. Why? How can I resolve this to receive Mail notifications? Thanks.
ElDiabloConCaca
November 28th, 2007, 08:09 AM
Growl is managed totally from the Growl System Preference Pane -- so you can manage ALL your alerts for ALL programs from one place.
Edit: I just noticed that growlMail is managed from within Apple's Mail.app... after installing the growlMail plug-in and relaunching Mail.app, you should see a "GrowlMail" section in Mail.app's preferences. Are you not seeing that in there at all, anywhere?
Digital FX
November 29th, 2007, 05:41 AM
growl can do @Mail and thuderbird. If you notificatoins utility growl is what you want.
cliveports
March 13th, 2008, 10:47 AM
I'm a recent pc convert and always used poppeeper and mailwasher. I've just spent HOURS trying to find an equivalent for the mac, I could find plenty that just told me I had mail or how many but none that would show a small preview of th eheader etc a la mailwasher. But finally I think I found one.
http://www.popmonitor.com/
Even the unregistered version is perfect for what I need and I hope this helps!
jbarley
March 13th, 2008, 12:52 PM
I'm a recent pc convert and always used poppeeper and mailwasher. I've just spent HOURS trying to find an equivalent for the mac, I could find plenty that just told me I had mail or how many but none that would show a small preview of th eheader etc a la mailwasher. But finally I think I found one.
http://www.popmonitor.com/
Even the unregistered version is perfect for what I need and I hope this helps!
Mmmm!, slightly dated at 2003, and written for PPC systems.
So can you confirm that this runs well on OS X Leopard?
jb.
cliveports
March 13th, 2008, 05:05 PM
Seems to run perfectly well on my imac, OSX Leopard 10.5.2. Oh and being a complete Mac Newbie.... I have no idea what PPC means!!
Satcomer
March 14th, 2008, 06:30 AM
Seems to run perfectly well on my imac, OSX Leopard 10.5.2. Oh and being a complete Mac Newbie.... I have no idea what PPC means!!
Wiki definition for PPC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC).
cliveports
March 16th, 2008, 05:09 PM
Ah thankyou Satcomer, so 'pre mac intel' days eh?
Just an update on this app, its still working really well under leopard. two very minor things I found, firstly when you double click to preview a mail and it opens in a new window the mouse scroll doesn't work correctly, secondly for some reason the right-mouse click doesn't work in the opened mail reading window I have to go to the top menu if I want to copy text etc. So I think its just not reading a multi button apple mouse. These are minor points and the app is still very useful and a good mailwasher stand in - you can even bounce mail!
Satcomer
March 17th, 2008, 12:40 AM
Which mouse are you using?
cliveports
March 17th, 2008, 03:17 AM
apple mighty mouse (wireless) And I have it configured for left handers but that shouldn't make any difference. I think the app just ignores all buttons apart from the Left click (in my case its the Right Click of course!)
eric halfabee
April 7th, 2008, 08:33 PM
Mail.appetizer. New beta version for Leopard.
palmharbor
May 28th, 2009, 05:04 PM
I now get a distortion of the mail icon in the dock...no notification I have new mail
and no sound either. I used Disk Warrior, applejack utility and apple tech support
as this is a new MacMini running 10.5.7.
Nothing has fixed it ...some asshole on one of the board to go to prefs for mail,
to accounts to Advanced and deselect "use IDLE command" well this does not
exist in preference...must be some 12 year old geek playing games
fryke
May 29th, 2009, 01:50 AM
Hm I don't quite get it. Why would you need a notifier at all? Mail.app shows new messages on a badge in the Dock. Doesn't that "inform you" that new mail has arrived? Mail also gives a sound when new mail arrives. You can set up rules that play different sounds when different things happen. (Automatically sort stuff from an important contact and play a loud sound, for example...)
Randy Singer
May 29th, 2009, 02:39 AM
Have a look at:
Mail Appetizer (donation requested)
http://www.bronsonbeta.com/mailappetizer/
Giaguara
May 29th, 2009, 02:47 AM
How about growl? Also that can give more notifications. http://growl.info/
cliveports
June 10th, 2009, 01:51 AM
Hm I don't quite get it. Why would you need a notifier at all?
Ah, well we all use our macs differently, The reason why I need another notify is that I like to hide my dock, so I wouldn't see when something comes in, and as for sounds, I do a lot of recording so a ding or whatever can occur at very inopportune moments!!
I found a cracking little app called Dockstar, it does just what I want, it puts an icon on the top menu bar with the number of unread mails, I can use multiple icons to show different types of mail and it even has a screensaver, very basic, but it also shows if there's new mail